Remaking 'Solaris' Helps Soderbergh Heal

Published 7:00 pm, Saturday, February 8, 2003

The film, one of 22 vying for the Berlin Film Festival's top prize, is about a recently widowed psychologist sent to investigate mysterious happenings on a space station orbiting the star Solaris. The psychologist, played by George Clooney, comes to understand the behavior of the station's crew members only after he encounters his deceased wife.

"Often, making a film is a way of working through some experience," Soderbergh said Friday at the movie's festival screening. "My father died in 1988 and that was my way of working through a very disorienting experience."

Said Clooney of "Solaris": "This was a film that made us all nervous because we didn't know how it would turn out."

Clooney and Soderbergh have collaborated twice before, on "Ocean's 11" and "Out of Sight."

The actor said he was able to apply the lessons learned from his work with Soderbergh to his own directorial debut "Confessions of Dangerous Mind," also being screened in Berlin.